Kirkbride Buildings - Northampton State Hospital

Northampton State Hospital

In 1855, the Massachusetts legislature approved the building of a new asylum in the western part of the state as a
measure to improve conditions of its asylum system. The original hospital building, built on the Kirkbride model in an Elizabethan style, was completed in 1858 and opened as the Northampton State Lunatic Hospital. Pliny Earle, a contemporary of Thomas Kirkbride and fellow founding member of AMSAII, served as superintendent at Northampton in it's early years.

Several additions were constructed during the lifetime of the hospital and give the Kirkbride structure a somewhat confused and rambling character. This is most evident in the rear of the building. Other free-standing buildings of significant size were built later and the patient population eventually exceeded 2000 in the middle of the twentieth-century. The entire hospital was closed and abandoned in 1993.

The Northampton Kirkbride, often referred to as Old Main, was recently demolished completely. Some other buildings on the hospital campus were renovated and put to new use as apartments, but the Kirkbride is no more.